Edgewater avoids neighbor's water meter woes

Edgewater's city manager said despite the failure of thousands of remotely read water meters, like those used by Port Orange, the city's "exception reports" caught the issue early.

MARK I. JOHNSONSTAFF WRITER

EDGEWATER — As Port Orange tries to determine what went wrong in a utility billing gaffe that cost the city more than $1 million in lost revenue, Edgewater officials credit a long-standing check-and-balance system with preventing a similar water meter reading problem. Edgewater City Manager Tracey Barlow said despite the failure of thousands of Sensus remotely read water meters, the same type used by Port Orange, the city's "exception reports" caught the issue early. These reports call for a manual check of water meters when they show an unusually low or high water flow at a particular user. "Because we caught the problem early we are confident we haven't had any revenue shortfall," Barlow said. An independent auditor's investigation into Port Orange's water-billing gaffes pointed to failures of oversight of internal controls, ensuring the proper entering and testing of information to calculate water-and-sewer rates and ensuring accurate billing of all utility customers. In addition the report found a failure to follow established policies resulted in customer billing errors that resulted in an estimated $1.04 million in under-billing over at least three years. Barlow said his city's water department began seeing issues with its Sensus meters in the summer of 2011. However, the city's reports caught the failure of the meters' transmitters to relay water flow measurements to a city computer system. Barlow said these manual checks are possible because the city is split into two zones. The meters in one zone are read early in the month and the second zone meters are read at the end of the month. He said so many "irregularities" began cropping up the city had to send out personnel to manually check the meters on an overtime basis. "To be specific, the meter itself is not the problem," said Environmental Services Director Brenda Dewees. Rather, the problem was the remote transmitter not reading the water flow through the meter. She said in July 2011 the city approached Raleigh, N.C.-based Sensus for compensation of its overtime expenses. The company contracted with an individual to perform the manual check and replace the faulty transmitters. There are about 11,500 Sensus water meters installed throughout Edgewater, Dewees said. More than half have already had their transmitters replaced. The city expected to have the remaining 5,000 transmitters replaced in the next nine to 12 months, she said. "Sensus has been very responsive to our needs and very proactive," Dewees said. Sensus Corporate Communications Manager Linda Palmer emailed a statement about the problems. "Sensus is working to fulfill the City of Edgewater's customer warranty and supporting their needs by addressing any issues and upgrading their technology accordingly," she wrote. "At Sensus, it is our top priority to address these concerns in order to ensure Edgewater's citizens receive the full benefits of the program, including more efficient and reliable meter reading." Dewees said the city went to the remote reading meters in 2005 because they tended to be more accurate and required fewer man hours to read. "We can drive down the road and a computer in the truck wakes up the meter and reads it," she said, describing the way the system is supposed to work.